


Ashen Blood

by hanfei



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 02:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20107990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanfei/pseuds/hanfei
Summary: Sometimes Jeralt wished he could read minds, he was not a greedy man, just his daughter's mind would be suffice.





	Ashen Blood

Sometimes Jeralt wished he could read minds, he was not a greedy man, just his daughter’s mind would be suffice.   
  
Since early of the year, his kid had been asking for bandages every month, piling them in her little boxes of things she collected over the years. An old teddy bear that she could not return to the owner (he ran away), a broken hilt from their onetime mercenary partner, a green tip quill with feather fallen off (taken from the corpse of a fallen noble), a torn diary (found in a dried-up well) and his blunt shaving knife amongst other things.   
  
Few months back, she tugged his shirt and asked to learn healing spells, to his surprise, she mastered the craft in such short time that she became their team’s main combat healer. A kid! His kid. Hah! Yet she pestered him every month insisted that she has not mastered the skill, that she still unable to heal properly.  
  
He tried to nudge her for an answer, but she always replied with a slight scrunched face trying to smile. It was heartwarming and worrying at the same time.  
  
He figured that she had been collecting injured little animals too, nursing them. But he couldn’t find telltale signs of little life around her thin cot, neither makeshift graves.   
  
The routine lasted for a year.  
  
One night he found the kid standing beside her own makeshift fire just a stone throw distance away from the camp, her face was in an unusual light frown. She gave him a small nod as he approached.  
  
“Father,” Her voice was quiet. The little fire danced and frizzled in the dark.  
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“Did mother die because she bled too much?”   
  
Alarmed, he whipped his head around to study her.   
  
Byleth was always a quiet child, she seldom asked a question, instead, she asked for books. Whenever they travel to town, she would tug him at the direction of a bookstore and get a book. Oddly, she never spends her time reading the book when she was in town, preferred to wander around the town.  
  
Jeralt thought that was her way to connect with the world.   
  
“What brought this on, kid?”   
  
Despite her blank expression, her fingers gave her out. Her thumb scraped her index finger. Such a small movement, but Jeralt know this was a heavy subject for her.  
  
“I think I inherited her bleeding too.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Physic is not working.” He can hear the slight tremor in her voice. “I still bleed every month.”  
  
He guffawed. Suddenly it made sense, those routine bandages collecting and monthly healing lessons. She was just hitting puberty.   
  
Since last year.   
  
Good grief. She must have been through that panic every month, alone.   
  
Letting out a sigh, he held her shoulders and looked into her blank eyes with as much warmth he could convey. “Kid, you are not dying.”  
  
She blinked.   
  
It surprised him when he realised that he understood her unspoken gesture, she was silently asking, “Why?”  
  
He answered without giving too much thought. “It’s part of being a woman.” And regretted as soon as those words left his lips.  
  
She blinked again, and he heard her silent question, “I thought I’m always a woman?”  
  
He swallowed his groan. “You are a girl, I mean, you were a girl.”   
  
She looked at him, long (and he imagined, hard as well, that he had to fight the urge to fidget under her empty gaze. He butchered this whole father-daughter talk. He had to ask one of his mercenary ladies to talk his kid through tomorrow).  
  
At last, the corner of her lip rose, though it faded quickly. “Okay.”  
  
“Okay.” He repeated. Was she trolling him?  
  
Grinning widely, he ruffled the girl’s hair. There was another question nagging his thought though.   
  
“Kid, how did you get rid of those bandages?”  
  
Slowly she turned her head and looked at the shimmering ember with the remnant of a stained strap poking out.  
  
“I burned them.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lame pun play on Byleth in-game's nickname: Ashen Demon. Sorry.


End file.
